


Tell me where the light is

by historiareiss



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, i'll probably add a chapter where baby tyrion is born too, jaime and cersei actually make it to pentos as davos smuggles them out of the city, post 8x05, they live happily and nothing can spoil their happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiareiss/pseuds/historiareiss
Summary: Basically what the tags say. Jaime and Cersei find happiness in Pentos, thanks to their little brother.





	1. The Light

Wandering the dungeons of Maegor's Holdfast brought back memories. Jaime still remembered setting off on long and mischievous expeditions with Cersei as children, down in the bowels of Casterly Rock, where many treasures were said to hide, if one was brave enough to look for them.

Only, back then, Cersei didn't hold onto him so tightly. On the contrary, Jaime could still recall how his sister rushed forward with the torch, leaving him behind, in the darkness, and he had to struggle to keep up with her hectic pace. She used to be so bold and impatient, much like himself, except he lacked her total disregard for peril. There was one peril that Jaime feared most, though, and it was not one that would normally lurk in the shadows. Tywin Lannister would wait for them to get out of there, before punishing them for their wrongdoing, at least.

But it was long ago, and Father had been long dead. And they would soon join him if they didn't make it out of there at once. She clutched at his arm like her life depended on it. Since when had Cersei grown so dependent upon him? It was odd, and yet Jaime would even have admitted that he liked it, had he not been so hellbent on finding a way out.

Tyrion gave him precise instructions on where to find the dinghy that would smuggle them to Pentos, where the Dragon Queen wouldn't find them. It would be a life of exile, one that he had always desired and never managed to force onto his sister.

Follow the stairs as far as they go, and then... a beach, at the foot of the keep. Or so he seemed to recall. His memory had always been anything but time-proof.

Cersei was growing increasingly restless at his side, which made him feel at loss as well. What if he couldn't find the beach Tyrion was speaking of? And what if the last remnants of the Iron Fleet found them and drowned their feeble dinghy while at sea?

It would be much better to die now, under the Red Keep's debris, with Cersei in his arms.

After a great deal of walking, Cersei yelped, tugging more insistently on his arm. She heard it before she saw it; the ruffling and crashing of the waves against the shore, echoing across the cave-like entrance of the dungeons, like one giant seashell.

He gifted her plenty of those too, on their nightly escapades at the beach of Lannisport, but that was a remembrance for another time. The light was there, at the end of the dungeon, just like Tyrion said.

So there he was, the Onion Knight, waiting for them with a face as grim as a harbinger of destruction. A mere smuggler, yet still honourable enough to keep his promise to the Imp.

Jaime helped Cersei climb aboard first, then pushed the dinghy offshore alongside Davos, before climbing aboard himself.

The skyline of King's Landing shifting further and further off the horizon was a terrible sight to behold. The sky had turned black from the smoke, and the dragon could still be seen circling above the mangled ruins of the Red Keep, obviously looking to wreck more havoc for the unfortunate populace.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” Cersei's voice broke off in a sorrowful whimper at some point. Jaime couldn't recall actually hearing her thanking anyone before, if not as a jest, but now he could tell it was heartfelt. He also briefly bowed his head to the Onion Knight, as they both paddled together towards safer shores. Jaime had to endure the pain that his wounds were causing him, in order to keep paddling. He couldn't risk slowing the boat with his own injuries.

“You have your brother to thank for that. He is a good man, and I owed him.”

Cersei's lips trembled and it looked like she would start sobbing again, but instead she held herself together. She was proverbially averse to letting her emotions show when strangers were around. Jaime wondered if perhaps now she would reevaluate their brother, whom she had always unjustly despised.

“When the baby is born...” Cersei sucked in her breath like her words required her to brace herself before uttering them. She cupped the soft bulge of her belly, looking down on it pensively. What she said next, was only for Jaime's ears, so she leaned over his shoulder. “I want to name him Tyrion.”

“Very moving, but you might want to do something about those stab wounds, if you want to see your child being born.” Observed the Smuggler, shrewdly.

Once in Pentos, Davos directed him to a physician, or a self-proclaimed one. The Onion Knight tossed a brown purse in the man's lap, then spoke a language that neither Jaime nor Cersei understood.

“Follow him to his house. He will stitch you up and wrap up your wounds. And may we never meet again.” Ser Davos Seaworth then turned on his heels, and found his way back to the docks, where his dinghy was waiting.

 

*

 

Finding a house hadn't been too hard, although calling it a “house” was an overstatement. It was more like a hut, and Jaime had paid for it with his golden hand, the one that Cersei had given him all those years ago and that caused him to be noticed and caught by Daenerys' outriders.

The Magister who sold him the hut had taken his payment without commenting on it. He just spared the Westerosi couple a perfunctory look, then fingered his forked oily beard, and showed them inside. He sure was a keen observer, for he glimpsed Cersei's round belly even underneath her loose robes.

“Freshly married, and a baby on the way already. May R'hllor bless your growing family.” The middle-aged man with yellowish skin smiled, showing his golden teeth. Cersei clearly disliked his manners and the remark he had just made, but only Jaime took the time to notice her grimace. A terror struck him that she could say something that would give them away. They had to be especially careful now. With Daenerys on a quest to conquer Westeros, any newcomer would stir much clamour in the Free Cities. They had to keep a low profile and avoid being recognized as the runaway enemies of the Dragon Queen.

“That hand... is made of solid gold from the mines of Casterly Rock. This hut doesn't equal its worth by half. You must have a manse for us, or a more fitting residence, for it to be deemed a fair trade.”

Jaime bit on his tongue, even though it should have been Cersei to do that in his stead. His sister's pride, ever boundless, threatened to have them both exposed now.

The Magister looked at the woman through narrow eyes, then back at the golden hand, that he had greedily shoved in the purse hanging from his waist. “I wonder how you have come by such a singular relic. Tywin Lannister has been dead for years, and so is his daughter, now that Daenerys Stormborn has unleashed her dragon upon the city. I can't think of anyone else who could get their hands on the gold of Casterly Rock. Unless-”

“We'll take it. We'll be more than content with the house and consider us in your debt for life.” Jaime cut in, his face gone white as whey from fear.

Living in it took some getting used to it, especially for Cersei, but in the end it grew on both of them. Jaime took a habit of rising early in the mornings, to tend to the vegetables growing in the small courtyard on their modest estate. They all died at first, and the ground remained barren for several moon-turns. Working the earth wasn't easy, especially for a man with one hand, but in the end he found a way of making it thrive. He attained three goats in exchange for the gold medallion that Cersei always wore at her neck, their late mother's legacy, and then let the beasts graze free on the ground. With their stools, the soil became good enough for growing vegetables in due time. And besides, they would need the goat's milk for when their child would come into the world.

Cersei took to practising her needlework, which she had been neglecting for years, ever since ascending to the throne. Then she racked her brains, trying to find ways to cook the tasteless edibles that Jaime drew from the garden. She burned her fingers and bruised herself all the time, and cursed the Seven out loud in the process, but eventually she would flatter herself thinking that her dishes were worthy of a king, and Jaime let her believe that. Anything tasted sweeter in that foreign land, in that beggarly hut, when fed by Cersei's own hand.

At night, they would sleep with their limbs entwined like they used to as children, before Mother could separate them. Not this time, though. This time, only his sister's swollen belly was between them.

“Jaime?” Cersei mumbled, one night. She was lying on her side of the bed, facing him. He had thought her asleep for the longest time, as she did not move, and kept her eyes closed. Jaime snuggled closer to her, brushing his nose against hers.

“I am here. I am right here.” He said, simply, placing a kiss on her forehead, but he could feel that she was still stiff against his body. “What is it?”

“Once, I had a dream just like this. We were in bed together, and our Joff was toddling around the house. But when I opened my eyes, you were gone, and I found myself in the pitch black darkness of my cell, alone.” Her voice was thin like a scrap of paper, and hot tears were beginning to form behind her tightly shut eyelids.

“Did I have two hands in your dream?”

Cersei smiled feebly through the tears. In their dreams Jaime always had two good hands. “Yes.”

“Well, then you can open your eyes, and glance upon my ugly stump. It looks real enough to me.”

And so she did. It was Jaime, his face only a few inches from hers, and his right hand still missing. She let herself weep freely in his arms now. Those were tears of relief and joy, and her brother kissed them all away.

 


	2. Tyrion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei faces what could be her last childbirth, but her brother stands by her, and all goes well. In the end, they make sure to never forget who they owe it all to.

It wasn't the first childbirth for Cersei. She had suffered the ordeals of a child-bed thrice before, and survived them all, yet this was by far the hardest. Even harder than Joffrey.

She had been young back then, while now she was well past her best years, and namely, the Tyrions in their family never came easily into the world. They were fierce little fighters in their own right, and albeit the world would never bet on their survival, they would still keep on living stubbornly and out of spite for those who would rather see them dead.

Cersei herself had been one of them. She had been the sternest persecutor of her little brother, ever since childhood, bullying and harassing him for the mere fact of being born as his mother died. And yet Tyrion Lannister survived through his sister's malice and his father's wicked lessons in cruelty. He was still alive now, somewhere across the Narrow Sea, and despite the bad blood between them, he had provided for her escape, worrying for her life until the very end.

But he didn't do it for her alone. Cersei knew better than to flatter herself so. It was for Jaime, mostly, his beloved big brother. The woman found herself thinking of Tyrion a lot lately as she had elected him as her child's name-sake on her way to Pentos and even Jaime, who had never cared much for the names she chose for their children, seemed to like the idea.

She was beginning to regret that decision now, after seven hours of labour, and most of her strengths gone. This must be like Mother felt too, when he emerged from her thighs, tearing her flesh apart. Cersei kept wondering if Lady Joanna could have loved the creature that brought about her death in her last moments. Can anyone love someone if they mean their demise?

She looked at Jaime, whose stump had cuts and bruises all over itself, since she had started clutching to everything she could get her hands on with teeth and claws. Jaime loved her, it was plain to see, and not without great personal cost. She herself had sent a cutthroat to have him killed. So maybe loving someone who would very likely be the end of you was possible. Well, whether it was or not, she would soon find out.

“Jaime,” she breathed, painfully. Her green eyes were sunken in her sockets, as black circles haloed around the emerald irises. She was threadbare, and almost out of strength. Jaime knew what she would ask of him next just by looking at her, and he didn't like it one speck, so he didn't let her speak. “No.”

“Please.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks, as she bit her lower lip, not to lose her last speck of strength here. “We have been happy here, I have been happy. Yet, it's time to say goodbye now...”

“Would you just shut up and focus on getting the baby out? I am here, you beautiful golden fool.”

Cersei didn't feel golden, and she certainly didn't feel beautiful either. But a fool? That sounded like her. “I cannot do it. I am going to die this time, I feel it.”

Jaime grabbed her head with his left hand, and forced her to look him in the eye, when her gaze began to wander. “Fuck what you feel. You hear me? We are going to die together, as we were born. I have made myself keep on living for you, when there wasn't any life in me at all. I drew it from you back then, even as we were miles apart. You can do it, too. In fact, you will.” He sounded beside himself, yet he wouldn't let himself weep. He needed to be strong, for her.

“We have done this thrice before already. Do you remember? Your oaf of a husband was out boar-hunting each time, and I came to you in the birthing room. I would have killed any man who stood in my way. We can do it again. We can do it as many times as we want.”

Cersei's pain, that seemed to have subdued, arose again, and she started shrieking louder than ever before. Jaime thought it a good sign. It meant that the child was still fighting to be born, struggling to come into the world propelled by his mother's fierce rage. A lion cub with Cersei's fair looks, and his own skill for swordsmanship. He would teach this one to fight, and Cersei could tell him stories of Lannister lore from centuries long gone by. If the child grew up to honour his name-sake, he would love stories and books, for sure, way better than wooden swords.

He could grow into a scholar, or a soldier, or his mother's sweet nobody, Jaime did not care. As long as he hurried to come out of his sister's womb, Jaime did not care what he would become later in life. He and Cersei would long be dead by then, anyway.

“I shall go and fetch a midwife. You wait for me, alright? I won't be long. Wait for me.” Since Cersei couldn't do it alone, and the bleeding wouldn't stop either, he came by what was only logical conclusion. He needed to find her a midwife, the very best in that god-forsaken continent, and at once.

“No.” She yelped, eyes blood-shut, and miraculously dry again. “You must stay, or I'll die.”

“But-” Jaime took another look at the entire scene. Cersei was lying down, her legs spread wide open, as her – well, _their_ – blood was soaking through the bed's linens. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Now help me up. I shall do this upright.”

Jaime did as he was bid. She was done being his helpless lost queen, like she had been back on their last day in King's Landing, and albeit he sorely missed that side of her, seeing how fiercely she was fighting for her life now also filled him with pride.

Cersei stood up, and leaned in front of the bed's foot-board, digging her nails in the wood of it. Then she let out more groans of strain, which seemed to last a life-time. Jaime could feel himself grow weaker the more she pushed and struggled. But he didn't fight it. He stood by her all through it, let her feed on his own strength, so that she could do that for the both of them.

The entire night went by, and before either of them knew, it was dawn, and with it came the release. Cersei howled one last time, and it was done. Jaime took the baby in his arms, directly from her thighs, and severed the flesh bond between them as best as he could. With the other arm, he had to hold Cersei up, for, fatigued as she was, she couldn't stand up on her own anymore, so he had to help her climb into bed once again.

“My baby, give me my baby.” It was a mess of sweat and blood around them, the linens blood soaked and ripped where Cersei had clawed at them, her own body battered and aching, yet she only had one concern. Jaime gave it to her almost willingly. He had never been fond of babies, and although this one felt more like his own, he still hadn't the touch for it.

The baby was screeching atrociously, he had almost put her in the ground with his own tiny hands, but Cersei loved him with all her heart already. Jaime sat back and enjoyed the spectacle of his sister, placing kisses all over the small whelp. He was exhausted, too, and he knew better than to intrude on such occasion. In all those years together, he had never seen her look half so blissful. Perhaps not even on the day that Joffrey was born. Joffrey and the others that followed had been raised in a court of vipers, under the looming ever-present menace of the iron throne, but it would be different for this one. He would not grow up to be a king, or a prince, or even a knight. He was simply their little Ty, the living embodiment of the peaceful life that they had attained thanks to their brother.

 


	3. Reminiscence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime and Cersei's little child keeps growing, and they aren't getting any younger. As they grow older, moments of reminiscence become recurring between them, especially once they are done making love.

They still craved each other's bodies, they still felt the pressing need to fill the space between them with touch. They still made love, of course.  
But not even that was like it used to be, back when they were young and on fire. Cersei was not as wild, and Jaime felt the potency of his love-making weaken with each passing year.  
  
He remembered the first night he had her, or she had him. At Casterly Rock, in a sordid inn, Cersei allowed him inside her for the very first time, and it was the purest bliss he had ever felt, meant to remain unsurpassed for many years to come. His sister wouldn't let him get a wink of sleep, that night, burning with desire as she was, and he had been eager and strong enough to give it to her each and every time that she asked for it.  
  
Not that the desire he felt for her would ever wane, but in the present, he would be content with just a slow and quick coupling, followed by a lot of touching and feeling her warmth against his skin. In the present, that was what gave Jaime the most pleasure. They weren't the people they used to be, after all.  
Those golden fools had perished somewhere across the Narrow Sea, in King's Landing, on the day that Daenerys Targaryen stormed the city with her dragon.

Even the physicality of them wasn't what it used to be. Jaime's body had scars and ugly wounds from past battles that never fully recovered, and still gave him grief from time to time. His muscles had softened, and then there was his stump, of course: his permanent reminder of all that he had lost.

But then he looked at Cersei lying at his side, still breathless from the sex, her own body sagging and studded with stretchmarks under the moonlight radiating from the open window, and was immediately reminded of all that he had attained.

_Is it a Rock you want, or me?_

Cersei had promised that he wouldn't regret his choice, and even after all those years, even now that they were both well past their prime, she kept her word.  
He did not regret a single moment of it.

With the child they had made sleeping peacefully in his cradle, and Cersei in his arms, Jaime knew he had been right to choose her every time.

“Do you remember when you drank yourself half to death at my wedding, and Father had to send you from the hall?” said Cersei at one point, pensive and amused at once.

So she was reminiscing as well, in the aftermath of the intercourse, just like him. It was no wonder.

They were one soul in two bodies, after all. Jaime cracked a smile, too, as the stern and aghast face of Tywin Lannister began to form in his mind, prompted by Cersei's question.

“Of course I remember. I think that ought to be the first time that I disappointed Father, ever since I took the white. He was so wroth that the entire hall fell silent when he stood up and walked to my table. I knew I ought to be frightened, and yet I was not. I felt like I had nothing else to lose.”

Jaime turned his gaze away from the ceiling, and looked at Cersei's face resting in the crook of his arm. His eyes were serious again, even sad.  
“You broke my heart that morning.”

Cersei raised a hand and cupped his face in it, then placed a gentle kiss on his lips. “I _fucked_ you that morning, if I recall correctly.”

Jaime stifled his amusement, careful not to wake baby Ty in his cradle. When it died down on its own, he set his eyes on her face again.  
“You were the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. And gods help me, you still are.”

“You know that's a filthy lie, ser.” His sister liked to call him _ser_ every now and then, like she used to do when they were still queen and knight, and she wanted to put him back in his place.

How he had loved to kiss that hateful word away from her lips, time and time again. And how he still did. Jaime leaned in for a kiss, tasting his own scent on her tongue. She would make a show of resisting his advances, when she was young and fierce, but neither of them had the taste for that anymore, so they just kissed quietly now.

“I know that my queen is the most beautiful in the Seven Kingdoms. I even crowned you at the tourney for your wedding, didn't I?” He reminded her, sardonically.

“That was before you dried all of Robert's wine supplies, in any case. And yes, you did, but so much has changed. We are not the beautiful golden fools that we used to be anymore. I am but a pale shadow of my old self.” Cersei confessed, mildly. Her smile curdled up a little.

Jaime could feel his chest ache whenever she would speak like that. He wanted to rid her of all the anguish that her heart might feel, even now, even here, all these miles away from home. Besides, in his eyes, she truly looked as lovely as she had been on the day that they had spent at the beach of Lannisport.  
He could still see her if he closed his eyes. Golden, and _dappled in sunlight, with water beading on her naked skin._ A sight to shame even the raging sun in the sky.  
And now she was no less breathtaking.

“Well, let me tell you this, sister. Were I still capable of unhorsing anyone, old and maimed as I am, I would still give the crown of love and beauty to you, because you alone deserve it.”

Cersei rested her head on his chest and looked up at his face. “I would do it all over again. All the hurt and the pain and the slander was worth it because I have you now, and our son.”

Jaime held her tightly, while placing small kisses on her upturned head. “I wouldn't. It has taken us too bloody long. Given the chance, I'd go to Father and ask him for your hand before he even meant to marry you off to anyone. And if he said no, we could elope together. A much younger and more pleasant smuggler than Davos could have helped us back then, to be sure.”

Cersei chuckled softly, as she felt the sleep beginning to cloud her mind with the fog of reminiscence. “I should have said yes the first time you asked me, Jaime. I should have-...” Her voice trailed off, and she peacefully fell asleep on his chest just that fast, her lips still slightly parted.

“I know. It would have spared us much trouble.” He whispered against her hair, and kept stroking it with his good hand until sleep got the best of him, too.

 


End file.
